


The death you sign up for

by Baozhale



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-05
Updated: 2017-08-05
Packaged: 2018-12-11 16:16:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11717940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baozhale/pseuds/Baozhale
Summary: Dairine likes to know things, and in the middle of her Ordeal she realizes maybe she didn't know that much about her sister. How the heck could NITA have signed up to be eaten by a shark?[Prompt: Dairine's reaction to finding out what Nita signed up to do in Deep Wizardry, from the Crossingscon writing workshop]





	The death you sign up for

When Dairine saw Nita “take” the blow that slid off, and smirk, the floor dropped out from under her. Nita knew something she didn't. _The way to keep from getting hurt is to know things_. Dairine needed to know whatever it was Nita knew. Then she knew: Wizardry. So Dairine had taken the Oath, then been chased across and beyond the known universe by henchmen of the Lone Power all wizards faced off against. Now she needed to know what to _do_ , because she was on Ordeal, and she had to assume the Lone Power was close behind.

 

So she read. _The way to keep from getting hurt is to know things,_ so she needed to know what other wizards had done to beat It. She read that Nita had volunteered to be eaten by a shark in order to save the East Coast. The smooth silicon ground of the planet she was on dropped out from under her again. Nita, do something braver than cross the street? Nita _had_ to have known something Dairine didn't in order to make a choice like that, and Dairine didn't have time to fix this gap in understanding. She had to focus on a plan for _now_.

 

And then the planet was alive, and there were mobiles, and she named them, and they were talking about freezing the universe, discussing thermodynamics like they could rewrite it. _They_ could. Then the Lone Power was there, and It was speaking in Logo's voice. There wasn't time to understand _any_ of what was going on before the mobiles froze their local universe, but she had to know if she was going to stop them. She hadn't read the documentation first, she didn't know what she was doing. What was it Nita knew that she volunteered to be eaten by a shark? Nita had known something she didn't, and she _hadn't_ fixed it, and that was what would cost her, cost the mobiles, cost the universe, everything. She was shaking, and she couldn't explain the terror of being lost in endless nonbeing, and Gigo was shaking too.

 

 _The way to keep from getting hurt is to know things_. The Motherboard, the mobiles, needed to know what Life was from the first-hand experience they couldn't understand yet, and Dairine didn't know how to explain it, but she could share directly if she were tied into the motherboard, as the mobiles were. So the motherboard read her memory, and then the motherboard filled her in return. The data was in the mobiles and they rejected the Lone Power's plan, wholly.

 

Your choice,” said the Lone Power. At the sound of It's voice, Dairine struggled to rise, but failed. “Enjoy it. You will make no more choices… but first, to pay for the one you have made, you will watch what the entropy you love so much will do to her.”

 

“Wanna bet?” Nita was there, with Kit, and she was being braver than crossing the street again. Risking (sacrificing, Dairine expected) their lives to – try to save hers? Buy some time? Piss off the Lone Power? It's focus was on them, which gave Dairine time to haul herself to her feet with the help of her mobiles. _The way to keep from getting hurt is to know things_. And now she knew things, more than she ever had before. She knew how to divert the Lone Power's blows now, keep It from hitting herself or the Mobiles. And then she knew: _Where entropy is, there its creator also is, either directly or indirectly_. She could stop It by penning _all_ of It up inside herself, then dying and taking It out of the universe with her. _Now_ she understood how Nita could volunteer to be eaten by a shark: it was the certain death you sign up for in order to save the world or the universe for everyone else.

 


End file.
